This Flight peaks with a crash-landing. It happens at the 25-minute mark. The plot descends into an extended epilogue from there, not as much about the airplane as it is about the pilot, nicknamed Whip. It was his technical know-how that saved 96 of the 102 “souls” on board, but, as far as the National Transportation Safety Board and a blood test are concerned, it could be his alcoholism that endangered their lives in the first place.

Director Robert Zemeckis cues the legal drama movie music, scored by Alan Silvestri, and lets the story coast along. What Whip, played by a somber, if not sober, Denzel Washington, does at the end is an automatic nominee for stupidest movie character decisions ever. It seems highly unlikely that a real-life pilot in his position would do such a thing on the grounds of mere morality. But I’m with him, and the movie, up until that point.

If this Spike Lee joint, which plays as a neutral biography for three hours before suddenly transitioning into a propaganda piece, really does present an accurate portrayal of Malcolm X, then I don’t think his legacy deserves celebration. His underlying mission; to lift the social oppression of the black race; was a commendable one, yes. Racism, primarily by whites toward blacks, which remains an issue today, was even more of a problem during his lifetime; the end of which happened to coincide with the end of the Civil Rights Movement. But he too was a hardcore racist; a brainwashed follower of “The Honorable” Elijah Muhammad, The Nation Of Islam and all their ridiculous anti-white philosophies; for a long time.

The fact that Malcolm X may have began to shed his bias during his final chapters; it wasn’t until he made his “required” pilgrimage to Mecca that he realized not all white people are devils; isn’t good enough. Accurate or not, Spike Lee has done a remarkable job of visually depicting the life of a man I may not have otherwise cared enough to learn about, but the man we’re supposed to be praising comes across as not much more than a buffoon. As educated as he is when it comes to the english language; he studied every word in the “white man’s” dictionary; he doesn’t seem to be much of a thinker in the way of general logic; the kind of logic Martin Luther King had that says you can’t end racism with racism.